THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME Soundtrack Gets Orchestra Cover on Vinyl (Premiere)

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Grab your ocarina and start practicing scales. There’s a new Legend of Zeldasoundtrack coming that you’ll want to play along to the moment you get your hands on a physical copy.

The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Timesoundtrack is getting a major makeover–the classy kind. Nintendo 64’s classic RPG gets the orchestral treatment on Hero of Time, a new soundtrack by arranger and project director Eric Buchholz. As Buchholz told Nerdist, “With Hero of Time, we sought to create a single, cohesive experience that weaves all of the complex underlying themes of the game, like impermanence and mortality, with Koji Kondo‘s timeless melodies that have become as iconic as the game itself. The orchestration takes an East-meets-West approach, with the inclusion of taiko ensembles, Eastern woodwinds, and harmonies found prevalent in Japanese film and game scores.”

Hero of Time raised over $50,000 via Kickstarter to reimagine the beloved soundtrack, and put their heart and soul into creating a product worth coveting forever. More surprisingly, they got iam8bit to sign on to help release the record on vinyl. Zelda superfans know what a big deal this is. Hero of Time will be the first time Zelda is hitting vinyl outside of Japan. Fans have the option of buying a digital copy of the album, a 6-panel digipak CD, the gold limited edition of the CD, or on vinyl courtesy of iam8bit. The album officially drops on March 27th, but preorders can be made right now via the album’s Bandcamp page and iam8bit. Do note that physical copies of the record ship out after April 24.

Let’s take a moment to acknowledge how giddy the album artwork makes us. Somewhere between the solar flares, the perfect cylinder of cumulonimbus clouds, and Link’s epic power stance, we got major chills. Instead of rehashing the original Nintendo 64 artwork with dreary browns or putting Link front and center on the cover to remind us what the protagonist looks like (as if it’s possible to forget), designer Houston Hanna and artist Lekso Tiger teamed up to make the perfect, mood-setting piece. The rest of the album’s artwork is just as beautiful. The color palette pulls off the look of watercolors without blurring the edges of the otherwise rigid scenery. For proof, just look below.

If you’re wondering which songs made it on the vinyl release, stop fretting. The team behind Hero of Time fit 21 tracks on wax. That means all your favorites from “Spirit of the Valley” to “Dungeon Dwellers” are on there. The full track list can be seen below:

There’s one last thing you need to see to get hyped for this album: the orchestra. Duh. The 64-piece Slovak National Symphony Orchestra saw its musicians turn the Ocarina of Time soundtrack into sweeping, cinematic beauty. From the violins to the violas, french horns to the harp, gong to the cymbals, every instrument in sight was used to recreate the magic of the game.

Thanks to Buchholz’s compositions and arrangements, Koji Kondo’s themes take on new life in brilliant form, but seeing the structure of the orchestra helps put into perspective just how much time and energy went into making these beautiful renditions. Check out photographs of the people who make the magic happen below, and don’t forget to head here to pre-order a copy of the record before they sell out!